


adjusing sails for home

by bebelate



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, rib fondling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 19:00:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5977738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bebelate/pseuds/bebelate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe takes Finn to the Academy on Naboo, a thinly-veiled attempt to impress him which doesn’t go to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	adjusing sails for home

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't stop thinking that Poe Dameron is definitely the kind of guy to take his not-quite-boyfriend to his old campus and have everything go tits-up. So I had to write it.
> 
> Obligatory 'first time posting fic' comment (though not first time writing fic, this is an ancient affliction).

Finn had felt wind before, but not like the wind on Naboo. 

The first time he felt it, without the barricade of his trooper armour, he was on Jakku, where it wasn’t so much wind but hot air streaming past as he ran for his life, whipping sand into his eyes. The second time they were on Takodana, where the wind was so heavy and humid it lapped at him in warm waves. 

Following Poe into the Academy grounds, Finn felt a breeze so gentle he thought someone had brushed past him. It had a smell and a taste, salty but fresh. 

“This is where you learnt to fly?” Finn asked, half a pace behind Poe no matter how much he tried to keep up.

“I knew how to fly before,” Poe said. “This is where I learned to be good.”

“Did you graduate, before you joined the Resistance?”

“Absolutely. You think the General hires unqualified pilots?” 

Finn didn’t say anything. General Organa made a lot of decisions Finn wouldn’t presume. Poe laughed at Finn’s blank expression. 

“The Resistance was underground here for a little while. But I graduated,” Poe said. “Then I joined the Resistance full-time. I guess you could say we both shrugged our shoulders of indoctrination.” He shrugged one shoulder to illustrate his point. Finn knew there must be more to it all than that and wanted to garble out a hundred questions. But if he’d learned anything over the last few weeks it was that Poe was in no rush to share every detail of his life before Finn met him. Poe was kinetic, always moving forward, always present, taking everyone in a fifty-foot radius along with him. 

Poe led the way under a yawning archway into a courtyard that could comfortably land a dozen Falcons. The Academy couldn’t be more different from the Base. There was so much open space. 

“Look at you. You’re awed,” Poe said. “You haven’t even seen me demo for the kids yet.”

“The kids?” Finn asked. “Do you perform for them?”

“They like me taking one of the A-wings for spin. Boosts moral or something.” Poe grinned and patted the helmet tucked under his arm. Finn’s moral felt boosted, all right.

They rounded a corner and, as though they’d been lying in wait, a swarm of students fell upon them.

“Captain Dameron!” one squealed.

“He’s a Commander, Nal. Sorry, Commander Dameron, she doesn’t know-”

“Your hair looks good, Commander.”

“Commander, is it true you fired the shot that destroyed Starkiller?”

“News travel fast this side of the galaxy?” Finn said, over the top of the excitable heads.

“It’s a school,” Poe said, as explanation and turned his attention to the kids. “Hey, I got to chat with the Man in Charge. Keep my buddy here company till I get back.”

He left, serenaded by a chorus “of course, Commander Dameron”s. The kids barely gave Finn chance to watch Poe go.

“Are you in the Resistance?”

“Are you a pilot, too?” 

“Are you in Commander Dameron’s squad? Is that a blaster?” 

“Yeah,” Finn said, when he found enough room to squeeze in an answer. “You never seen one?”

“Not up close.” 

Finn took his blaster out of the holster and held it pointed at the sky. There was a jostling of bodies as the students swarmed in. Someone knocked Finn’s elbow and his finger had the trigger half-down before he stopped himself.

“On second thought…” Finn holstered the blaster. “I’ll show you later,” he said. The kids were unperturbed and only seemed to press in closer.

“What’s your name?”

“Cool jacket.” 

“My name’s Finn.”

“Where did you get it?” one of the students asked, jabbing a green finger at the emblem on Finn’s chest. 

“My name or the jacket?” Finn asked. Though both answers were the same, the clarification felt important.

They went on like this for several minutes, including a pinch of Finn’s cheek and one particularly bold student with wandering hands “checking the sturdiness of that holster”. Finn was looking around for an escape route when the kids stopped talking – he could hear, feel, them buzzing – and his eyes landed on Poe, striding across the courtyard liked he’d rehearsed the entrance a hundred times.

After Rey had returned from her mission to locate Skywalker, she and Finn had spent a hefty chunk of a 48-hour period devouring holovids from the bed in Finn’s recovery room. They were as fascinated by the advertisements as much as anything else.

“They have stuff for your hair,” Rey had said, watching upside down from where she lay on the bed, head hanging over the edge. Her face danced with disgust, awe and rapture. Unlike Rey, Finn had used shampoo before, but he was glued to the hologram with his mouth open. Later, he’d blame it on the pain-meds, how hopelessly entranced he was. The humanoids on the holovids didn’t seem real, nothing but glittering hallucinations.

Poe, halfway across the courtyard, looked like he’d just stepped out of a holovid, a something in his walk and rippling hair. 

“They said I can’t start the demonstration until the students are in their seats,” he called.

As though following a direct command, the kids sped off, with a few ‘bye, Finn’s that Finn couldn’t reciprocate because he didn’t know any of their names. They’d come and gone so quickly, leaving Finn dazed and a bit out of breath, like a hurricane.

“I thought impressing people was my job,” Poe said, a holographic twinkle in his eye. Was there, as Rey called it, stuff for eye twinkles, too?

“They’re impressed by me?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll distract them,” Poe said and slapped his hand on Finn’s chest.

The demonstration was nothing Finn hadn’t seen Poe do before. It was daring and cocky and technically faultless. Finn stood at the back of student body, sitting in rows and rows of fold-up chairs on the edge of the runway. One of the students turned and waved at him, crumbling into her group of friends when Finn waved back. How did they learn anything, Finn wondered, in a place like this? There were no boundaries. Then again, his eyes slid back up to the sky, Poe seemed to have done all right from it all.

Finn had looked up in time to watch the A-wing loop-de-loop, 360 and barrel roll nose-first into the ground.

For a few stretched seconds, there was no sound other than the shrieking of metal skidding a hundred feet across the runway. The A-wing shunted sideways and stopped abruptly. The engine coughed out a mushroom of dust and chuntered into silence. 

Finn’s stomach tumbled right out of him and he was hurtling towards the crash site before it could climb back in. Still paces away, not close enough to touch the A-wing, Finn watched the roof of the cockpit hiss open and a helmet popped out, followed by a pair of hands clasping the edges of the ship and the torso of a laughing, cock-headed Poe.

“Unbelievable,” the pilot laughed. 

Finn grabbed the shoulders of Poe’s jacket and dragged him out. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. It just stopped, dropped and rolled,” Poe said, hitting the runway with both feet and dumping his helmet at his feet. “Maybe I stalled it.”

“You’re the best pilot in the galaxy,” Finn huffed. “You didn’t stall it.”

Together, they manoeuvred away from the runway, Poe ushering away students and teachers who lingered like worried bees, his arm warm and heavy over Finn’s shoulder, breathing sharp and ragged in his ear.

“You might have punctured a lung,” Finn said. 

“I haven’t.”

“You have literally no way of knowing that.” 

“The fact that it’s my body gives me a slight advantage.” They had crossed the courtyard and passed into the cool corridor of the school. Poe leaned back against the wall, wrists hanging loose.

Finn was done with talk about bodies. He held up his palms in warning and slid them under Poe’s jacket. Poe hissed and pressed his head back against the wall, closed his eyes. Even his eyelids were shiny with sweat.

“Not that I’m complaining, Finn, but what the stars are you doing?”

“You think they didn’t teach me basic first aid and medical examination on Base?” Finn said. 

“Did they teach you to be so handsy or is that all you?”

“All me. Hold still.”

Miraculously, Poe did. Though his breaths were shaky and shallow, he sank, moulded between the wall and Finn, a sculpture of calm. Finn did not look at him directly, because the full force of Poe’s charm-o-matic up close was thoroughly off-putting. He still had that holovid-unrealness to him, even mussed up and in pain.

Finn concentrated on the shape of Poe’s ribs under the pads of his fingers, under the layers of shirt, skin and muscle. Poe’s breaths were getting deeper, longer. The world under Poe’s jacket was hot and damp. Finn touched the side of Poe’s ribcage, triggering an intake of breath, dragged up through lips and teeth. Lips and teeth wherever Finn tried to look, until his gaze finally snagged on Poe’s, who smiled on an exhale, lids low. 

“I don’t think they’re broken.” Finn let go of Poe’s torso and stepped backwards. The air felt cold on his hands.

“Thanks, doc. You could get a role on the med-wing. Feel hot pilots up day-in day-out.”

“They’re bruised to shit though. You’re looking at a two-week recovery period.” 

“Damn.” Poe rubbed his hand over his shirt, straightened his back and started moving along the corridor. “Do you think the kids will mind if I change the demo to a Q and A?”

It was impossible to tell if Poe was joking. “I can’t tell if you’re joking,” Finn admitted, following Poe down the corridor. He wiped his empty hands on his own shirt. “Will these kids join the Resistance too?”

Poe paused. “Most of them.”

“Do they know?”

“Finn.” Poe spun and grabbed Finn’s arms, moving faster, holding harder than any man with recently and severely bruised ribs had any right to. “This is nothing like the Base. These kids can leave whenever they want.”

“And they don’t want?”

“No. They know what we’re fighting for. What they’ll be fighting for in a year, or three, or ten.” Poe squeezed Finn’s biceps through the jacket and let go. Finn imagined fingerprint sized bruises under his skin, damaged tissue to match Poe’s ribs. “Just like I did.” He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. “The reason I brought you to Naboo – I have an apartment here. It’s not much. I keep it, for when I’m passing through.”

“Are you…asking if I’ll…?”

“Fuck, no. Finn,” Poe made a noise in his throat. Finn startled, wondering how Poe had finished his question. “I have an apartment here, and if you need it, or want it, it’s yours.”

Finn took a minute to process that information, spinning it through his mind, looking for hidden meaning. Finn always had to look harder than most, but Poe was always clearer than most too. It evened them out, after a bit of balancing.

“Leave the Resistance?” Finn asked.

“Only if you want to.”

“And stay in your apartment?”

“If you need to.” 

“Without you?”

Poe opened his mouth, but all Finn heard was an explosion.

Finn dropped to the floor. He felt more than heard, thanks to the ringing in his ears, Poe do the same beside him.

He took in his surroundings. The explosion had come from outside. He jumped up into a squat and crouch-walked his way to the nearest arched doorway, peering around the edge. There was smoke coming from the runway, people running for the hanger. Another explosion landed to the right of the group. Someone fell, two others dragged them by the arms the last few feet to shelter.

A dozen or so fighter ships were swarming the sky above them, sending blasts intermittently, smashing down walls and blowing holes in the ground. Finn braced himself to run for the hanger, where they’d aim their next shot.

Poe’s hand pressed down briefly on Finn’s shoulder, grounding him, as he ran past the doorway, landing heavily on the other side.

“TIE fighters,” Poe panted, pained, one arm across his ribcage, the other braced on the floor.

“The kids. They’re in the hanger,” Finn said. “They’ll blow it.”

Poe was shaking his head. “If they haven’t already, they’re waiting for something, trying to draw someone out.”

“Are they here for…?” Finn trailed off and pointed at his chest. Poe’s eyebrows lowered and he shook his head sharply. With difficulty, like fighting gravity, Finn turned his hand to point at Poe. Poe’s eyebrows smoothed out, a determined serenity. A maybe.

“My ships off-campus. I can’t run that far,” he said.

“I’ll go.”

“No. You’ll get killed. And you can’t fly.” Finn couldn’t argue. But he couldn’t sit still. Poe was raking his eyes across the sky, the hanger, the runway. “If I can get to an A-wing.”

“They’ll shoot you before you take off.”

Poe already had taken off, crouched low, hurrying across the courtyard towards the runway.

“Shit, shit,” Finn muttered, on Poe’s tail in seconds.

As soon as his feet touched the runway, a blast went off behind Finn, hurtling him into the side of the nearest A-wing.

“You good, man?” Poe shouted. Finn nodded, mentally categorising his bruises. An elbow, his shoulder blade, nothing major.

“I’m good.”

Poe was climbing into the cockpit. Finn chanced a glance up at the TIEs. They were shooting apparently without aim or intention. He’d never seen this kind of strategy implemented by a squadron.

Finn snapped back to land when a string of expletives burst out of the cockpit.

“It’s dead. Like the one I crashed.” Poe was heaving himself out of the ship and landed deftly next to Finn. “Why aren’t they aiming for us?” Poe asked, sounding far too frustrated about not being shot at.

“I don’t think they know we’re here,” Finn called back. Another blast missed the front of the A-wing by inches.

“You sure about that?” Poe challenged.

“They don’t know we’re us.”

“They don’t think we’re Resistance,” Poe said, nodding, understanding.

“They’re trying to shock,” Finn said, waving his hands between them. “Who they think we are. The Academy. It’s a threat attack.” At least he guessed it was. He’d never known a trooper go on a mission that didn’t end in killing or capture.

“Then we need to shock them back,” Poe said, and slapped the rear of the ship. “Do you think the guns’ autolocks still work?”

Finn raised his eyebrows. “Override the weapon dispensers and reroute the energy they’re not using for flying?”

“Create a dozen airborne bombs.”

“Can we do that?” Finn’s voice rose a pitch.

“Hey, you suggested it,” Poe said, but it came out tinny, his head already inside the rear of the ship. Finn ran to the closest A-wing and scrambled inside. If this didn’t work, if the guns’ autolocks weren’t still functioning, they were asking for death. They had minutes before the troopers figured them out.

Poe’s ship went off first, a dead hit on one of the TIEs that burst into flames. Finn’s hit next, a second explosion showering pieces of metal onto the runway. Poe was half-swallowed by the next A-wing before the other fighters could get their bearings.

When the third and fourth explosions went off in the sky, Finn running to the next A-wing along, the fighters reformed and pulled away, disappearing through the atmosphere.

Finn’s knees shook. “That was too simple.”

“Don’t complain, buddy,” Poe said, limping up to him.

“It’s too simple,” Finn repeated. “Stormtroopers don’t act like that.”

He put an arm under Poe’s armpit, only vaguely listening to his mumbles about the not-so-simple paperwork of a handful of destroyed A-wings. Together they stumbled over to the hanger, where faces were peering out. Finn tried to walk like a Resistance member should, but Poe was heavy for a short guy and Finn felt no older than any one of the kids in the hanger.

 

Poe was right. The paperwork took most of the afternoon and a curt Com from the General ate up what was left of it (“It means she cares,” Poe told Finn, unconvincingly). It was dusk before they left the planet. Poe hadn’t even done his Q&A, though a few tenacious students insisted on walking them back to their ship. Finn sucked in one last breath of salty Naboo air and the wind tickled his skin in parting.

In the air, Poe pressed the heel of his hand into his temple. The space of skin between his eyebrows crumpled.

“They didn’t want either of us. They just wanted to scare the living daylights out of those kids.”

Finn shook his head. “I don’t understand why.” He also didn’t think it had been too successful. The students were, if anything, over-the-moon they had their own Resistance rescue story.

“I suppose they need new tactics now we’ve got a traitor’s Intel.”

Finn was almost sure Poe was joking, but it made something unpleasant blow through his stomach. 

“I never knew everything.”

Poe touched his ribs. Finn had calculated an extra week onto the recovery period. “I just wanted to show you-” Poe cut himself off, put both hands back on the controls. “I thought we deserved a break. Heroes of the Resistance, you know.”

“Since when does Commander Dameron want a day off?”

“Since the last one crashed and burst into flame.” Poe tilted his head to the ground. “I can see my place from here,” he said. “It’s not too late for me to drop you off.”

Finn shook his head. 

“All right,” Poe said, somehow talking normally through a planet-swallowing smile. “I just wanted to put the offer out there. And, for the record, I never wanted you to take me up on it.” 

Finn knew he could never tell Poe in words how much the offer made his chest feel too small for everything inside it. He gave Naboo one last look. He wondered if Poe would bring him back here. 

“Just you, me and the galaxy, man,” Poe said. He raised an arm to slam his palm on Finn’s shoulder, aiming for jovial but visibly wincing. Finn lifted the hand and placed it back on the controls, where Poe would be less likely to cause himself damage. Although, the way the day had gone, Finn couldn’t be sure he was safe there either. At this rate, Finn would be reluctant to let Poe go anywhere without him.

Perhaps Poe was thinking something similar, because he didn’t let go of Finn’s hand, their knuckles pressed against the cool metal of the panel board, fingers locked in and around each other, an origami of flesh.

“The General expects us back in-”

“You ever been to a Rogue planet?” Poe interrupted. “They’re planetary masses that ejected from their solar system. Not gravitationally pulled to anything, just spinning their own orbit. It’s mad. Some people call them orphan planets. Sound relevant to your interests?”

Finn was going to mention General Organa again, but Poe released Finn’s hand from the hot mess of fingers on fingers to set new coordinates, leaving Finn untethered. An orphan planet. He wanted to grab onto Poe’s hand again to find a gravitational pull of his own.

Poe sent them into the rush of hyperdrive and winked at Finn. One, or both, of those things sunk a hook into Finn’s navel and tugged. Hell, Finn thought, they did deserve a vacation day. Succumbing, he sank back in his seat.


End file.
